The effect of the COVID-19 disruption on the gender gap in students’ performance: a cross-country analysis

This paper investigates how the Covid-19 school closure has affected the gender gap in students' performance and which are the potential drivers of these disparities. By analysing four different countries, the paper represents the first study addressing the issue from a comparative perspective. The study uses data from the Responses to Educational Disruption Survey, which comprises international comparable data on how students approached remote learning during the Covid-19 disruption. The extent of the gender gap is estimated by employing an ordered logit model, while the Karlson-Holm-Breen decomposition method is used to analyse the different potential channels that could account for the gender gap during Covid-19. The empirical results reveal that Covid-19 disruption seems to have harmed to greater extent girls compared to boys, both in terms of improvement in self-perceived learning and self-reported improvement in grades – with odds of a more affirmative response between 20% and 25% lower for girls relative to boys. The main drivers explaining this gender gap are physical activity and psychological distress of students during the Covid-19 disruption, as well as the perceived family climate. The paper shows how Covid-19 disruption seems to have exacerbated the gender gap in educational performance, providing evidence on the factors driving these differences. The findings could be employed to design policy actions aimed at increasing gender equality in education.

BERTOLETTI Alice;  BIAGI Federico;  DI PIETRO Giorgio;  KARPINSKI Zbigniew; 

2023-02-24

Springer Nature

JRC130766

2196-0739 (online),   

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43546-022-00342-y,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC130766,   

10.1186/s40536-023-00154-y (online),